


The Sandwich Job

by sophoklesworld



Series: The Job Chronicles [6]
Category: Leverage
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Episode: s04e12 The Office Job, Hurt/Comfort, Multi, a bit crack-y, at least implied, post-episode: The Office Job
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-02
Updated: 2020-05-02
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:01:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23971963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sophoklesworld/pseuds/sophoklesworld
Summary: Eliot gets an apology-sandwich and Hardison gets an Eliot-made sandwich. Win-Win.
Relationships: Alec Hardison/Parker/Eliot Spencer, Pre-Relationship - Relationship
Series: The Job Chronicles [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/390256
Comments: 14
Kudos: 106





	The Sandwich Job

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Emela](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emela/gifts).



> This is for Emela- This is the only hug I can give you right now, but hey. A cyber hug in form of a fic, I hope that counts!  
> 

Hardison’s calls for Eliot had been very manly, okay?  
Whatever Parker said. She hadn’t been there. It had been a Very Dangerous Situation and he was still feeling it in his bones. So no matter how many times Parker was gonna repeat the scene of him yelping Eliot’s name with this goddamn high-pitched voice on the tape she lifted from Hanzig, Hardison sounded manly. He didn’t even know how she’d managed to make a copy before he deleted everything he found of the video. Once again, he was in awe of her abilities.

Parker was cackling over the clip like the mad woman she was, while Hardison tried very hard to keep his head in the program he was writing — a program to tap into the Steranko.

It didn’t help that Eliot was looking at him with this angry stare, either.  
Only because of the stupid sandwich.  
They finished the job the night before, and Eliot was still angry, as often as Hardison said he didn’t take the damn sandwich (which was a lie, sure. But grumpy Eliot was all kinds of cute). Now, Hardison considered to get up and prepare a damn apology-sandwich for Eliot, just so he would stop _staring_. Hardison needed to concentrate. Plus, one bad-tasting sandwich may give him an unlimited amount of Eliot-sandwiches, if he played his cards right - dammit, concentration! Steranko!

There was a loud grumbling coming from the couch. Hardison and Eliot looked over to Parker who stared at her stomach. “I’m hungry.”

Hardison dared a quick glance at Eliot only to find him glaring at him again, and yep, okay.  
He quickly stumbled to his feet, "I’m gonna make you a sandwich, Babygirl! And you, too, Eliot."  
Parker grinned at him, "Thank you!"  
Eliot, the critic, only lifted an unconvinced eyebrow. Grinning and shaking his head Hardison made his way to the kitchen. 

Busying his mind with the Steranko-problem, he busied his hand making Turkey sandwiches.  
Hacking Steranko in itself was a problem. He could feed it false information. He was sure, artificial neuronal networks were involved. The first of its kind, really. So, Hardison imagined, feeding the Steranko pictures of them, putting timestamps on the pictures, making it think they frequented the building often before, introduce them into the system as constants, make the system see them as part of the system… that could be an potential target.  
The moment he came to the conclusion on what to do, the code halfway written in his head, he finished his three sandwiches.  
Bread (actual European bread — Eliot is a _saint_ ), Turkey, a bit of mayo and a sad salad leaf. This could work.  
"Food’s ready", he called the others, setting the plates down.

Parker zapped over, dropping in her chair and immediately biting off a huge chunk of the sandwich. She grinned while chewing. Hardison grinned back, wondering if he should just give her his own sandwich as a second.

Eliot was close behind Parker. Instead of dropping into his seat, he stared at his sandwich as if it offended him just by existing.

"What?" Hardison asked.  
"Dammit, Hardison!", Eliot’s lips were quivering in the way that sometimes made Hardison wonder and hope about Eliot’s true feelings, other times invited very treacherous ideas into his mind, and sometimes let his blood rush _places_. Sometimes, like now, it was all three.  
"This is a peace-offering. I don’t know what I did wrong, now", he said, affronted, trying not to laugh.  
Eliot’s hands hit the table, making the plates clatter a bit. Oh, this was _fun._ Hardison loved annoying Eliot.  
"Oh, you made me a sandwich, apology accepted!", Eliot cooed in his 'I’m proud of you'-voice before it turned into his 'but I don’t have time for your bullshit'-voice, "You call this a _sandwich_? This is a _disgrace_ to anything food."  
"You haven’t even tried it, Eliot! Before you can complain, taste it! Not everything tasty looks nice! Orange soda for example!"

Eliot’s eye twitched. But to Hardison’s delight he actually picked up the sandwich with the tips of his fingers, disgust very evident in his face.  
The way he pretended to gag on the tiny bite made Hardison wish he had thought to film this.

Parker had already ravished her plate, and was now eyeing Hardison’s sandwich so he pushed his plate over — if his calculations were right, he might get another one out of this situation.

"See, wasn’t so bad", Hardison said, turning back to Eliot.  
"Not so- not so _bad_?", Eliot jumped to his feet, a mad glint in his eyes, and oh- maybe Hardison hadn’t read the situation right. That wasn’t just sandwich-thief annoyance, there was an underlying glimpse of anger there. Real anger.

So maybe he should keep his mouth shut for once, and not rile Eliot up any further, until he knew what was going on. That wouldn’t keep him from enjoying the show, though.

Parker didn’t stop eating once, but she too, leaned back a bit to enjoy this.

Eliot pulled out plates, ingredients, vegetables and herbs, some of which Hardison has never used in _his life_. And all the while he was grumbling. "Wasn’t so bad." and "This was like a turkey rolled around in mud and grass and was then put on a piece of bread in that condition.", "Not so bad." and "Orange soda, the drink of the devil." with the eventual "Dammit, Hardison" strewn in.  
"How on earth did either of you survive as long as you did", he murmured, his shoulders tensing right after he said it. It was such a small thing, Hardison would’ve missed it, if he hadn’t been intently looking at those strong, protective arms.

And _oh_.

Survival. He'd almost fallen of a roof, yesterday. And they'd rewatched that scene a couple of times earlier.

That explained the anger.

And he was certain there was worry that Eliot had managed to masked better than anger, there, too. With that realization, he felt a bit of his own residual tension resolve.

A few minutes and a lot more grumbling later, Eliot turned around, and put plates in front of Hardison and Parker.

Eliot suddenly leaned into Hardison’s space, so close, their noses were almost touching, " _This_ is what a sandwich is supposed to taste like! Taste it! Savor it!"

Hardison won, and he wants to cheer, he got another amazing sandwich. It doesn’t feel like a win.

There’s a turmoil in Eliot’s eyes. Hardison could really see it now, and he could see how hard Eliot is trying to hide it. The annoyance was mostly real, but there’s fear in there. Fear of what could have happened, fear that Eliot usually doesn’t even let close enough to touch him _like that._ Hardison knew, that if you start letting it take you over, everything else comes crashing in, and in Eliot’s case, that could be so very very dangerous.  
If he had to guess, Hardison would say the fact that Parker watched that scene about twenty times in a row didn’t help Eliot’s condition (Parker herself had such a detached connection to heights, she probably didn’t really think about this being a scary situation for them).  
Eliot would probably deny it, but Hardison knew, the fact that it would be dangerous for Parker and him was way worse for Eliot than bringing himself into danger. Hence the anger, Hardison guessed. He couldn’t afford to let himself go, but he also couldn’t repress this, without talking about it.

Eliot was still in his space, breathing heavily.  
Hardison surged forward, hugging Eliot forcefully.  
"Thank you", Hardison said, trying to convey _everything_ in these two words. Everything he wanted to say but wasn’t sure Eliot would _stay_ to listen to.

After a few seconds, where only their breaths were audible, Eliot surprised Hardison by wrapping his arms around him in return. He felt the tension leaving Eliot’s shoulders, and relaxed more into the hug.  
Suddenly, another set of arms and, what he suspected were legs, wrapped around them.  
Eliot grunted, annoyed (Hardison had figured out a long time ago that anything Parker and him did only ever resulted in mock-annoyance but he grew tired of adding a mental "mock-" in front of all the mock-annoyance-related emotions they ignited in Eliot).  
"What?", Parker said. "You’re hugging. Today, I wanna be hugging, too."  
Hardison felt one of Eliot’s arms sneak out of their hug to include Parker better, and his heart turned into goo. God, he was a sap for those two, but he suspected they were, as well.  
At some way-too-fast-approaching point, Eliot extracted himself. Parker managed to cling to Hardison for a bit longer.  
"Now", Eliot said, pretending this whole exchange didn’t happen, even though his whole stance was lighter, happy glint in his eyes, "Eat your damn sandwiches."  
Hardison grinned and extracted himself from Parker, who spun over to her own seat again, for a third Eliot-made sandwich.

Hardison, probably wisely, decided not to acknowledge the fact that Eliot sat down and ate Hardison’s apology-sandwich, despite his earlier complaints.

**Author's Note:**

> I’m pretty sure, the concept of artificial neuronal networks (ANN) was around a longish time, but the actual terminology originated sometime around 2009-2012? ( I THINK!!! no excessive research done, here, only reading a single Wikipedia article). (and it's been a while since I watched an Steranko Episode sooooo... artistic liberties for whatever is wrong with that.


End file.
